Ethics

My choice is the current economic crisis.  "Huh?" you ask. "What does legal ethics have to do with it?"

Apparently nothing, and that's precisely my point.  People are blaming the crisis on inadequate regulation of credit default swaps, inadequate regulation more generally, poor business leadership, irresponsible lenders and brokers, irresponsible buyers, among many other failings.  But so far, nobody's blaming unethical attorneys. 

The lack of a story is a welcome change from lawyers' complicity in many of the major economic scandals and crises of recent decades.  Among other prominent examples, lawyers had a role in the Savings & Loan crisis and the Enron collapse. Moreover, political scandals have tended to involve lawyers, from Watergate to the torture memo controversy. The unfortunate reality is that major economic and political controversies have tended to implicate lawyers.  The accusations sometimes turn out to be inaccurate or only partially true, but some of the accusatory fingers usually point in the direction of attorneys. And that's what makes the current economic mess -- and the absence of any blame for lawyers -- so noteworthy. 

Of course, I may have missed some fingers pointed at attorneys, and there may yet be blame headed that way.  But for now, my nomination for the biggest legal ethics story of the year is the very absence of one connecting lawyers and an epic political/economic controversy. It's a pleasant and surprising development in an otherwise bleak and depressing storyline.